


An Ace Up His Sleeve

by thetransgirlwhoneverwas



Series: Fictober 2020 [5]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26843131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetransgirlwhoneverwas/pseuds/thetransgirlwhoneverwas
Summary: A mission of cooperation and friendship that has the potential to go horribly wrong? Surely there is no better team to send than an uptight bureaucrat and a trigger-happy rebel who can't go two microspans without bickering with each other.
Series: Fictober 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952200
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	An Ace Up His Sleeve

“Agent Ace, I do wish you’d take this seriously once in a while.”

“Okay, Narv.”

“That’s Deputy Coordinator!”

“Sorry, Deputy Coordinator Narv.”

“The Vilrians are a notoriously proud race,” Narvin chided his reluctant companion. “They won’t take kindly to your backtalk.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ace sighed as she continued to walk beside him. Backtalking aliens three times her size and equipped with three times more weapons just to see their reaction was one of the most fun parts of a mission, but Narvin had never taken kindly to it. “Does that mean you’re going to stop giving everyone orders and be polite for a change?”

“We’re going to have to be firm with them,” Narvin countered. “But, if needs be, I am capable of...stepping back.”

“You are?” Ace asked, not expecting an answer, as the question was entirely mocking in tone.

“Yes, and if you could go five microspans without trying to make something explode, maybe you’ll see it one day,” Narvin responded, and Ace genuinely couldn’t tell whether he didn’t realise he was being mocked, or absolutely knew and simply didn’t rise to it. Either way, she was going to keep making fun of him. He did make it so easy.

Ace fell silent for a moment, a rare occasion at the best of times, but here it had a very important purpose: to examine their surroundings. A building loomed ahead of them, growing larger and more imposing with every step, a giant incongruous slab of grey in the middle of a jungle of reds and purples, a facility hidden away from the prying eyes of the rest of the world in the depths of an enormous and undoubtedly artificial underwater cave teeming with bio-luminescent life that shied away from the intrusion of the two sudden arrivals.

“So, what’s the plan, Deputy Coordinator Narv?” she asked, fiddling with the watch on her wrist out of boredom.

“Like I said, the Vilrians are very proud, and not likely to give up their chance at developing time travel,” Narvin explained, with as much patience as he looked like he could muster. “And they’re getting very close to developing viable time travel, and from there it won’t be long before they have a workable way around transduction barriers, and at that point they become a potential threat. So we need to convince them to work with us rather than against us. Make them allies before they have a chance to become enemies. Preferably. Years ago we would have simply threatened to disperse them all if they didn’t stay in line.”

“Except that Romana banned dispersing anyone yonks ago, right?” Ace knew that Narvin wasn’t serious in his threat anyway, but wanted to point out the obvious flaw in his plan, partially to impress him with her knowledge of Gallifreyan history and politics, but mostly to annoy him.

It worked, and Narvin sighed deeply. “Yes, the Oubliette of Eternity has been outlawed for a long time, and we wouldn’t use it even if it hadn’t. Terrible invention, I’m honestly ashamed to have ever considered using it.”

“So if they get themselves time travel, what’s to stop them from going back and giving it to themselves earlier and making it better that way?” Ace inquired.

“The Vilrians are proud, not stupid,” Narvin shot back as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “There are very few races in the universe stupid enough to contravene the Laws of Time badly enough to create a paradox in their own history, and the rest of the time-faring species make sure those particularly short-sighted races don’t develop time travel in the first place.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Ace nodded, she had to agree that it made sense. “Even the Daleks wouldn’t do that.”

“Indeed, not even the Daleks,” Narvin confirmed as they reached the front of the building, the vague shape of a door making itself only just visible as they approached. Narvin cleared his throat entirely unnecessarily as he prepared to knock on the door, but the door opened before they even had the chance to raise a hand. A slender nine feet of red scales greeted them, but despite the intimidating figure, the Vilrian’s expression was one of warm welcome.

“Ah, the delegation from Gallifrey,” a rasping but not aggressive voice came from the long jaws of their greeter. “Please, enter, we have been expecting your arrival.”

The Vilrian extended a long, clawed arm into the interior of the building, a sign of both welcome and intimidation. We’re welcome here, but the second we’re not, we’re in trouble, Ace interpreted the motion.

“Thank you,” Narvin responded with what meagre warmth and gratitude that his authoritative voice could muster. Narvin had never sounded inviting, Ace thought to herself. Much like the Vilrian greeter, not necessarily aggressive or angry, but he never sounded like he was pleased to see you. Except when he was talking to Leela, Ace mused. That was the exception.

The two of them walked with the Vilrian, who led them to an elevator and pressed the button to take them to the top floor. The doors slid shut, and Ace couldn’t help but notice the lights dim subtly, but just noticeable enough to create a less friendly atmosphere.

“We here at the Vilria Institute of Temporal Research have known about Gallifrey’s attention on our planet for a while,” the greeter continued as the elevator brought them further and further away from ground level. “We anticipated your arrival, and hope we can foster a...mutually beneficial relationship. We would hate to end this day as enemies. We have unfortunately never been very...cordial with our enemies.”

Even without her training from the Celestial Intervention Agency at the forefront of her mind, Ace would have detected the barely veiled threat in the sentence. She smiled nonchalantly and twisted her watch around her wrist.

“Indeed not,” Narvin countered. “Let us hope that we can come to a friendly arrangement. Gallifrey likes to keep her allies close, and we’d be delighted to keep Vilria within range of all of our advanced technologies.”

Even despite the darkness, Ace knew that the Vilrian’s eyesight could probably see her expression with ease, so she forced herself to suppress a smirk. It didn’t matter who you were or how tough you thought you were, nobody in the universe could outclass Narvin when it came to veiled threats.

Before the greeter could come up with a pithy response, however, the elevator pinged and the doors slid open to a large room, much of the back of which was dedicated to an enormous spherical device with wires sticking out of every inch of it, each wire hooked up to a wall socket or computer. The lights were dimmed, not as much as in the elevator, but clearly most of the power in the building was going to the device. Ace wondered how they got power lines down here, but then remembered how deep underground they were and how large the building was. She wouldn’t be surprised if a large part of that was a geothermal power plant supplying energy to the Institute to power their time travel experiments. As she and Narvin walked towards the device, the room seemed to stretch out further and further, and though they walked for several seconds towards it and the device grew bigger, they didn’t seem to have walked much closer. Ace took a look behind her and saw the elevator several feet further behind them than it should have been, and flashed a quick glance to Narvin. He answered with his own expression confirming his agreement with her unspoken observation: it wasn’t just time travel they were experimenting with. They had clearly had some progress with dimensional engineering, and this room was slightly bigger on the inside.

After a walk that lasted entirely longer than it should have done, finally they reached the base of the prototype time capsule, now seemingly even bigger than the building had been from the outside, which Ace knew was not unreasonable now. The greeter bowed deeply and turned around to retreat, leaving them in the company of who Ace had presumed was the head scientist.

“Ah, welcome!” an even more course voice rasped from the head scientist. “Impressive, no? Behold our first time travel capsule, but certainly not the last!”

“Very impressive,” Narvin complimented as best he could.

“Pretty nifty,” Ace added, earning a cold stare from Narvin.

“Our capsule is magnificent, and the first successful test will be very soon!” the scientist announced. “And from there we will soar and soon be at the very level of Gallifrey and the other Temporal Powers. We will take our place among the elite of history!”

“Congratulations,” Narvin said in a tone that probably wasn’t meant to sound sarcastic, but definitely did.

“Nice!” Ace added, earning another cold stare from Narvin.

“Indeed, with the advancements we’ve been making, we will soon rival, nay, outpace Gallifrey, I’m sure!” the scientist was certainly good at letting their pride show, Ace noted. She knew the Vilrians were known to be prideful, but she suspected that this particular individual was just a little too full of themself.

“Oh?” Narvin’s tone was definitely meant to be sarcastic this time.

“Yeah, okay,” Ace’s, however, was infinitely more sarcastic and harder to miss, earning her the coldest stare yet from both Narvin and the head scientist.

“You doubt our impending supremacy?” the scientist flashed a smile that did nothing to hide the contempt in the question.

“Back to the topic we came here for,” Narvin cleared his throat and the smile vanished. Ace flashed her own apologetic smile. “Gallifrey offers her congratulations on your advancements, and wishes to extend an offer of friendship.”

“Before we become enemies, you mean?” the scientist countered, and Narvin’s expression changed from inscrutable to unreadable but slightly perturbed. “Threats to Gallifrey? Or were you going to threaten to use your infamous Oubliette on us?”

Ace’s own expression turned to worry at this.

“Wait, didn’t you say it was outlawed?” the scientist mocked, and Ace realised that it wasn’t a private conversation anymore, as every other Vilrian in the room had stopped what they had been doing and were now approaching them. A quick listen behind them told Ace that the greeter had also not left, and was now approaching from behind to cut off a quick escape.

“Did you not think we knew Gallifrey would be threatened by us?” the scientist continued to deride them. “Did you not think we anticipated your little threats? Did you not think we didn’t have you monitored from the moment you arrived in the cave?”

“Listen, we have no intention of-” Narvin started but was cut off by the head scientist.

“We know you had no idea of how far we’ve come!” they announced to the delight of their fellow scientists, who were now showing off just how sharp their claws were and just how much they towered over Ace and Narvin. “We’ve been monitoring your speech and your faces since the moment you arrived! You had no idea we were studying dimensional engineering! You had no idea we were ready to start our time travel!”

“Look, mate, we don’t-” Ace tried again, but she too was interrupted.

“We don’t need your friendship!” the head scientist was shouting now. “We don’t need your superiority, your condescension! We will become more than you ever were, and we will use our power to crush Gallifrey and any who stand with you! You cannot stop us, you have no idea how much power we wield already!”

Ace and Narvin were quiet for a moment before Ace turned to Narvin and shrugged.

“Well, we tried,” she said nonchalantly.

“So we did,” Narvin agreed. “But clearly these Vilrians are not interested in being allies. More’s the pity.”

“We don’t care about being your allies!” the scientist continued to rant. “We will dest-”

“Yeah, yeah, destroy and conquer and rice pudding and all that,” Ace interrupted.

“Rice pudding?” Narvin asked under his breath, but still incredulous.

“Sure we can’t tempt you?” Ace asked. “Just a little bit of friendly cooperation?”

“We do not care!” the scientist kept going, very much into their own glory now.

“Well, I suppose that is that, then,” Narvin said with absolutely no urgency in his voice. “Did you think we were unaware that we were being watched?”

“You didn’t really think any of that was real, did you?” Ace laughed.

“Well then,” one corner of Narvin’s mouth turned up in what could almost be approximated as a smirk. “Ace?”

Ace flashed one final devilish grin, a grin known to strike fear in the hearts of her enemies and supervisors alike, and pressed a button on her watch with dramatic glee.

“Ha!” the scientist laughed, a raucous, grating sound. “You think you can intimidate us with parlour tricks? We have-”

The time capsule behind him exploded.

“BOOM!” Ace bellowed with utter delight.

Debris rained down upon the scientists who abandoned stalking Ace and Narvin and took to running in terror of the flaming chunks of metal descending towards them. Every wire attached to what used to be the device started sparking at once, and the computers they led to began to melt one by one.

“The capsule! The research!” the scientist yelled in despair and anguish. “No!”

“Ooh, no backups?” Ace shouted over the noise and carnage. “I get it, it’s really hard to get a WiFi signal this deep!”

“How?” the scientist was on their knees, and Ace knew that if they had hair, they would be tearing it out about now.

“Time travel, mate,” Ace smirked herself.

“Did you really expect us not to come prepared?” Narvin asked rhetorically. “In fact, did you not think we would have set our preparations up before you even knew we were coming? You underestimated us in every regard, and now you’ve paid for it. Let this be a lesson to you. Ace?”

“Gotcha,” Ace nodded, and the two of them activated their respective Time Rings and left the laboratory in chaos.

“Did we need to be that harsh on them?” Ace asked once they were back in their TARDIS en route back to Gallifrey. “I mean, they were a pretty nasty bunch, but completely destroying their research?”

“The Matrix predicted a future in which they threatened all life,” Narvin responded matter-of-factly.

“Wow, really?” it was Ace’s turn to be incredulous. “They really were that advanced and strong?”

“No,” Narvin shot the suggestion down. “But the Matrix predicted that they would try to go back in time and provide time travel capabilities to themselves in the past, thus creating a huge paradox.”

“Whoa,” Ace blinked. “So they’re not advanced, they’re just stupid?”

“They were,” Narvin confirmed. “Although, after that humiliation, I think we can safely assume they aren’t anymore.”


End file.
